Robert Gold of Profit Business Cast interviewed me and the podcast is now available at Profit Business Cast. Robert really did a great job of interviewing me. Below, I'm stealing Robert's summary of the podcast that he put together on his website. Better than I could have done.

Paul Chato’s company has built over 2,000 small business websites, so he’s had a front-row seat to the web’s takeover of the business world. “Canadian businesses are brutally behind almost everybody in the world,” he says. “Even though we have some of the highest data speeds in our homes, Canadian businesses have just not wanted to invest in any kind of [online presence]. They’re not investing—I don’t know why.”

Chato took quite the circuitous route to his current job, via a Ryerson University degree (in Radio and Television Arts), graphic design, standup comedy (he helped found The Frantics), and the CBC (where he was Head of TV Comedy). Today he’s CEO of Your Web Department, which provides managed website services.

Here’s what Chato says Canadian firms need to understand in order to build a robust and sustainable web presence.

IT STARTS WITH A BRAND

A website is only one piece of the marketing puzzle—albeit an important one. Chato says not enough people understand the importance of a brand. “I always thought it was hilarious in the 2000s when it was declared that bricks-and-mortar companies were going to be dead,” he recalls. “I laughed, even back then, because they were the only ones with the brand.” Web pundits believed simply being online was enough, but strong brands that consumers connected with helped digital laggards survive the digital revolution.

Every company has to start by finding a brand and a tone, Chato says. “If you are thinking of buying furniture from some place, do you remember a corner store with a nondescript logo and no personality, or do you remember Bad Boy and Mel Lastman?” he asks. Your website and online presence should follow from the tone you choose. “I can very easily create a verbal cloud that will conjure in people’s minds an idea of what that website should look like,” Chato claims. “[But] most business owners have no idea what that image cloud needs to be.”

KNOW YOUR NEEDS

“Build it and they will come” is not a maxim that applies to the online world anymore, but Chato says people who utilize free website-builder services haven’t realized that yet. “I think it’s great if you’re at the very, very beginning of building your website and you’re researching to find out whether your business is a viable business,” he allows. “But once you’ve found out that there’s some traction and some viability, I strongly suggest that you go out and spend the money on people who can help you put the pieces together.”

MEETING GOOGLE’S NEEDS

The list of things you need to do to attract traffic to your website is long, and it starts with the Internet’s most powerful force: Google. The search engine has very specific requirements. Chato uses the example of the headline atop your website. “It can’t be pithy—it can’t be ‘We bring good things to life,’ because Google has no idea who ‘we’ is and they have no idea what you mean by ‘bringing to life,’” he explains. “They need ‘Joe Blow Garage, in the GTA, fixes Volkswagen diesel engines to make them emission-compliant,’ and that’s an ugly headline.” It may not be creative, but it tells the search engine who you are, where you do your business, and what your product is.

NOT JUST FOR SHOW

Once you’ve got people to your site, you need to do something with them. Chato says too many small businesses websites consist of just corporate histories and mission statements. “No one cares,” he says. “The home page has to be about solving the problems of the person who’s visiting.”

Your website should have clear, actionable calls to action, he says, and those call-outs should represent at least 80% of the business. Chato cautions against putting in what he calls “dream” functions, sections about things you’d like your business to do but that it doesn’t already. “Don’t put a button in that says, ‘You know, I’d really like to get into fly fishing. I think that would be really big,’” he warns. “How much money do you make from that now? Nothing. Well, then don’t make that into a call-out.”

DON’T GET TOO AMBITIOUS

Small business owners are dealing with packed schedules and limited budgets, so any effort that won’t produce clear returns is a waste of both. “They’re all told to blog and 90% of them shouldn’t be blogging,” Chato says. “They should be managing their website, updating their website, and trying to find ways of driving people to a mailing list, at least to begin with.”

The same applies to social media—it’s not right for every business. “Be practical, be efficient, and just hammer the things that you know how to do really hard as opposed to spreading yourself too thin.”

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

Sorry about this but I have another WordPress whinge. The trigger was yet another conversation today with someone who hired a web programmer who didn’t deliver. They hadn’t delivered on multiple fronts, the design was not what the client expected. They’ve balked at the change in content. (Okay, I get that. Client directed changes should be extra in most cases.) And it’s really late.

The client, to their credit, was blaming themself for some of the missteps, but then I interrupted and asked, “Did they ask you what you wanted your website to do?” “Did they provide a wireframe so you could mutually discuss where the content emphasis should be?” “Did they talk about creating actionable items that lets the site visitor both see that you understand their pain and provide the solution in one click?” “Did they ask if your site was a Destination site or a Confirmation and Credentials website?”

The answers to the above questions were all no. Okay, well that’s not the fault of the customer. That’s the fault of the developer not guiding the customer. A website is viewed by many people as an intimidating technical exercise. Based on the number of people who come to us each month with similar stories it really shocks me that we seem to be the only ones asking these questions. I know that’s not true, but the evidence is there and it truly bothers me.

Okay, so what does that have to do with WordPress? The revelation I have relates to the creation of the wireframe. High-end custom website design includes them as part of the process, but we do them even for our $1000 websites. Why? Because it eliminates the guesswork from building the site the client truly wants. So, why are many WP developers not providing one? I think it’s because they just want to stuff you into one of the standard design frameworks and move on.

WordPress is only economical for the programmer if the customer does not demand more than what the template framework offers. As soon as they go off-book, it can get very expensive. And suddenly WordPress is no longre a cheap solution?

A wireframe opens up possibilities that the WP programmer does not want to provide you. Your Web Department does not use templates or frameworks. Our no-code system can pretty much give you anything the wireframe describes.

So, there you. That’s my theory. Getting railroaded into a WP framework is a lousy way to build a good website. If you want a website and the website builder does not say the word ‘wireframe’ then you should run away.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

No one said it was fair, but Google will now punish your site rankings if you do not have a mobile website enabled starting April 21. That sounds a bit heavy handed but we've been encouraging our customers to have a mobile friendly site for years. Many sites get up to 60% of their traffic from mobile users.

Now, Google is laying down the law. If Google search results (Search Engine Optimization) is important to you then I don't think you have a choice. Luckily, mobile friendly services are built into Your Web Department websites. But there is another piece to the mobile puzzle that Google does not help with. Should the mobile version of your website have a different focus from your main site?

Some people want their entire website available on the phone, but is that right for you? If you're a restaurant then probably the most important mobile tools would be address, map and a phone number link. Maybe the specials for the day, but your story and your complete menu is probably not required for mobile.

If you're a consultant who works from home then you probably don't need a map to your house. An email link, mobile phone link sounds good. Maybe even your LinkedIn link would make sense. A good headshot and content that confirms your expertise and credentials make as much sense on mobile as it does for your main site but maybe it needs to be formatted differently.

As you can surmise, mobile is not just your main site squished down, it requires its own strategy based on what a mobile user needs from your website.

One of our clients just got an email from Google Webmaster Tools telling them that their site is not mobile friendly and that Google goons (Goonles?) will come by and break her legs if she doesn't convert. Okay, it was nothing like that but it was a bit of a shock when she forwarded me the email, which I'm including here. If you have a Google Webmaster account, Google is checking on your website to see if it is mobile friendly in advance of it's April 21 deadline.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

A fine and honest, soul searching piece. There are several forces at play here. In no particular order: One doesn't really know if their idea will be successful. Business publications celebrate the against-all-odds-built-from-credit-card success stories. These should not be used as inspiration as they are outliers, one-offs. They only have one purpose, to sell magazines. So don't be fooled.

Next, all entrepreneurs have this voice that keeps saying, "Keep with it. Success is just around the corner." Frankly, this is what differentiates us and is a good thing up to point. But when does it become delusional? I don't know. Is it when you've maxed out your line of credit, credit cards and your relatives won't lend you any more money? There are great ideas out there that need years and years of losses in the millions before it succeeds. Amazon for instance. But if you don't have the resources then it's the wrong idea for you even if it might be successful in someone else's hands.

An entrepeneur is someone who is certain of success but shocked when it arrives, mainly because they are so freakin' tired that they don't notice it at first. But as a business person, you have only one imperative. STAY IN BUSINESS. If it means jettisoning your original idea, or adjusting it then you better do it fast.

My favourite technique for starting a business is to call the owners of businesses you want as clients and ask for advice about your business idea. Business owners hate to be sold but love giving advice. You will learn about the prospects for success and you might even pick up a client or two along the way.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

We build a lot of websites. The most difficult aspect is always about how to start or restart a website.

We've made it easy to think about how your website should flow and function.

1. Make a bold claim about your product or service.

2. Prove it.

It goes without saying that a bold claim makes people more interested in reading more. And then all that's left is the quality of your 'proof'. The better the proof, the more people will believe your initial statement.

Now to cost. Think of your budget not as an expense but as an investment. An investment pays dividends on an ongoing basis. But how much should a website cost?

One way to look at cost is as a mitigator of failure. That doesn't mean the less you spend, that your site will fail. It also doesn't mean that the more you spend that your site will guarantee success. One can 'luck in' and get to a creative solution on the first try, but that rarely happens.

Spending more on a website means you will have more design options, be able to hire better writers, photographers, illustrators, etc. You'll be able to get more strategic thinking provided, if you don't have your own. You will 'own' your website experience.

If you want none of those quality components then your website is at risk of not getting the job done. So, spending more mitigates risk.

Another way to look at it is just the parts of a good website:

- Strategy ($1,000 +)

- Customer survey, research ($3,000+)

- Copywriting ($500+)

- Photography ($300+)

- Video ($600+)

- Website design ($1,000+)

Each of those above components have a minimum cost to get started. Taking the low end of each will not completely mitigate risk but it's better than if you don't do them at all. And anyone who expects all of the above for $1,000 is, well… you know. But we also understand that you might start with just the website design and then start adding those other things later. That's good too, because it's always better to get started then wait for perfection.

One way to save costs is to remove any of the above components. Now you're increasing risk and moving your website into template-land and it will just look and work like everyone else's. If you're fine with that, good.

Our job is to give you choices. It's your job to make the decisions.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

The NEST was created by the guy who developed the iPod for Apple. From a functionality perspective, it’s just brilliant. I’ll get back to that later.

From a game changing perspective whodda thought about going after the thermostat market? We’re all used to using those ugly beige boxes with the LCD readouts that are sometimes hard to understand and impossible to program properly. Hmmm, beige boxes that are hard to use, remind you of anything?

The NEST is this stunning, round, glowing hockey puck that is cool to use and can be managed by your smartphone or tablet. Sure, there have been home automation-style thermostats that will also monitor the moisture of your potted plants, but again, taking a cue from our friends at Microsoft, they are insanely complicated and overly burdensome to use.

I read an article of someone who visited Bill Gates’ mansion. It was the realization of Gates’ automation dream of lighting and HVAC and home entertainment control, but as the writer wrote, only Bill could operate it.

I have a friend who can’t leave the house because his wife has no idea how to work any of the automated systems he installed. TVs would be on with no audio. She would sleep in the living room because she couldn’t turn off the embedded speakers in their bedroom, which were playing a constant loop of Frank Zappa songs.

Getting back to the NEST, and now its companion product the NEST Protect smoke alarm, it’s great in-the-box thinking. In-the-box? I had heard a person talk about how out-of-the-box thinking is the wrong term. Sorry, I can’t recall the speaker, it was while ago. He said that the box was the problem. We had to fix the box. Thinking outside of it was not the solution.

The NEST fixes the in-the-box problem of the beige programmable thermostat. Using it one immediately thinks, why didn’t someone figure this out earlier? Some of this comes from the notion that this is what we’ve been doing for so long that we don’t know how to do anything else. Some of it comes from engineers thinking they know what people want without asking them. A lot of it is driven by cost.

You can tell the NEST was built around smartphone technology. It draws its power from the 5 volts the furnace generously provides controllers. But our old controller needed batteries. Why did it need batteries? Because you could see the old-style resistors, capacitors and thyristors that looked like they came from a Soviet era submarine jutting from the back of it. No one was thinking, “You know, if we used smartphone tech we could get rid of the batteries.”

Using smartphone tech would have increased the cost of the basic device. That’s bad, right? There is so much cheap crap companies had to compete with. But what if people would happily pay more for the beige box if it wasn’t beige and wasn’t a box and was easy to use, pleasant to look at, wifi enabled and controllable by smart devices?

I’m sure these questions must have been asked by someone at the beige box makers but no one was listening or too afraid to ask.

Is your product a beige box? Have you been selling it for so long that you can’t think of how it might be better even at the risk of increasing its price and losing some sales? This beige box can also be a service.

Often it just requires a change in assumptions. People have expended a lot of ink on how RIM/Blackberry blew it: arrogance, bad management, etc. But I think they blew it because their overriding engineering consideration was battery life. Some of their devices would run for a month before recharging. This caused Blackberry to focus on a small, tight operating system and low powered processors. Apple, in contrast, thought that as long as someone can plugin overnight, who cares? This would have been heresy at RIM. Who would have had the guts to go to management with that idea?

By deciding that one-day of charge was enough, it freed Apple to design a device with more powerful, albeit power-draining, processors along with an operating system that took up hundreds of megabytes of solid-state memory instead of the paltry 35 meg in the Blackberry.

There is no denying the engineering genius of the Blackberry but by deciding that one-day of batter life was good enough, it gave birth to the practical notion of a real computer in your pocket.

What assumptions are you holding onto that probably need updating? The cheese industry was declining until some clever bloke (or blokess) thought of selling it shredded as a condiment. Now cheese consumption has skyrocketed.

I won’t go into the NEST Protect here. Maybe later. It’s 5 times more expensive than the beige smoke detector it replaces, which always goes off when you’re making toast, but it’s really cool.

The only thing that makes me unhappy is that Google has bought NEST. If I don’t join Google+ are they going to turn off my heat?

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.